Paronoid Delusions Of A Young Mind

Chapter 1: Car Ride Nightmare

You know those car rides where everyone is happy, and you yourself are so delighted your heart could burst with glee? Perhaps your Dad is singing along to the radio in his silliest voice and the stupidity of it makes you want to giggle. You turn and there is your Mum rolling her eyes and trying not to laugh herself. I remember these times well.

But now sat in the back of the sludge grey Volvo that my father insists is silver, I can't ever imagine there had ever been any happy time to remember. The radio barely drowns out the deafening silence that has ensued in the car, both my parents exchanging awkward glances from each other to me and back to the road. They know something is going on.

I sit staring at the front passenger seat; the angle of which I am sitting making my neck hurt. I was bolt upright; nothing was going to make me move, not when they were watching. The others. I knew they were going to get me eventually, the only question on my mind was when. That was important. To pick a moment. To pick a moment so I can be ready.Mother and Father were on their side, nothing I could say was going to change that. Not even when I pretended. I'm good at that. Pretending. An odd word of sorts with so many implications. Lying was also another strong point to being me. I had to be a good liar, otherwise, how would I have made it this far? Good liars have to have good memories, I have one of those, a bloody good one, but now I feel it slipping slightly, not a situation I want to be in, not when that place is on the table. Not been to that place for a while... Not that I want to anyway.

I had been to the unspeakable place before, not often as I mentioned just now, but enough times to know of it for being what it is, but never for this particular reason, not at all, but this time it is different. I can feel it. I'm not sure how or why I know this time is different, but I can feel the shaky walls that hold up my life are about to come tumbling down. The only thing I could try now was to do what I usually did, lie and pretend, just better than I ever have before. I'll act like nothing was going on; act like my episodes weren't getting longer and closer together; act like I was a regular sixteen year old girl with nothing more than a bit of boy trouble and some parental authority issues. Nothing more, nothing less. Just average. However, I doubt that is going to happen. My nervous twitching, my eyes never ceasing to watch every move made, my edgy, tenseness about certain subjects. I was never going to get away with this.

My mother's hair was flapping about madly around her head rest from the open front window. Every strand like a separate whisp of gold, magical and dazzling in the little light that was to be had, for the weather was mirroring my mood. Dark, cold, uninviting. Nothing was going to stop that. Nor was the dull scenery of the M5 going to change. Oh, but her face was the saddest part. The anguished look of pain that clouded her striking and angelic features, her lips curled into a harsh, false smile, her face not following suit. The way her ocean blue eyes looked cloudy and watery as if about to weep. She never understood me. She never cared much that frustration filled me when she cried with every word of explanation I offered. She never bothered to comfort me when she herself was a mess with things that were going on in my head. Why is she the one that cries? My heart was giving out with guilt. What had I done? What had I done to deserve this being put on the people around me? I can't help what I am... Can I? I wish I could change everything. I wish I could change who I was, who I am, what I have, my very being.

My father was very much the same as my mother this day, but he never cried. He usually nods solemnly and gives me a hug when I tell him. He tells my mother to shut her face when she sobs, he tells her to man up and deal with it, he asks her why she cries, he tells her she shouldn't cry when all this is happening to me, not her. He's on my side... Or I though he was. But something was altered with him today. His usually high and powerful features, sunken and weakened by the burden I had put on him just by being. His usual smile was now fixed in a firm and permanent grimace. His thick, midnight hair which was usually gelled meticulously in place, was hanging down over his face like some of the emo kids that went to my school. His bold and handsome features were the only thing that made him recognisable as my father. Even his eyes, those piercing green eyes, were different. They burned as they found you, searing your soul, tearing through at everything in their path. So different... So very, very, inexplicably different...